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"Every transaction doesn’t require people to make money," Reed said. "And I think that’s something America probably needs to understand if we’re going to fix problems like homelessness and starvation and underserved communities having no opportunities."

Buying Power: Milwaukee Entrepreneur Helping Build A Path To Homeownership In City's North Side | Wisconsin Public Radio

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Infrastructure is the physical embodiment of how our communities are knit together, and by virtue, our cities, states, and country.

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The vote came after days of contentious public hearings and deeply emotional debate among council members, who have openly struggled to balance concern about historically high crime across Minneapolis against public calls to reform a police department that has long been accused of racism and excessive force, especially against residents of color.

Minneapolis City Council votes to cut millions from police budget amid record crime rates - The Washington Post

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Still, as much as Obama may be correct about White anxiety, he is wrong about the supposed toxicity of “defund the police” as a slogan. The people it turns off were unlikely to support the effort anyway, and the phrase carries with it the power to compel attention — and, with it, long-overdue change. White backlash has been the response for decades to every single assertion for equal rights by African Americans. If Black political aspirations were limited by fear of turning off many White people, African Americans would never have fought for voting rights, equal access to quality schools or integrated housing. If Black folks had depended on “a big audience” of White people to support civil rights, we would scarcely have made any progress at all.

Opinion | Obama’s ‘defund the police’ comments showcase a radical cynicism - The Washington Post

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On the one hand, urban police departments do not protect Black Americans from crime. They solve a pitiful number of rapes, robberies, shootings and even homicides. Use this Washington Post tool to look at all the murders that did not result in an arrest — half of them. The clearance rate on lower level violent crime is usually even worse. (And when they don’t solve crimes, guess who are often the victims?)  Imagine a job in which you were paid handsomely and given applause and political influence even if you succeeded half the time or less.

Black America is over-policed and under-protected - Minnesota Reformer

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It can take near-total decompensation before anyone steps in to intervene in a human crisis — and then it's almost always the police. After a summer of protest, the cops' role in these moments is under sharp scrutiny. But the police response is just one part of a broader system largely geared toward treating symptoms, not causes.

For people in mental health crisis, what comes after police response? | Crosscut

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White supremacy and anti-Blackness show up every day in philanthropy. From the way decisions are made to how resources are allocated to who is being left out of conversations, the power in our field has long been held by white people with enormous wealth looted from our Black communities, Indigenous communities, and communities of color. Yes, we need to unlearn our biases, make bold commitments to anti-racism, and fund Black leaders. But this wake-up call requires us to do even more to support our partners and the communities put on the margins who have been called to serve.  Here’s what being pro-Black at Tides Advocacy looks like for us:

Our focus on justice requires us to be pro-Black every day. - Tides Advocacy

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Unlike “equal pay” — the concept most often used to address gender pay disparities in the United States — the concept of “pay equity” doesn’t just demand equal pay for women doing the same work as men, in the same positions. Such efforts, while worthwhile, ignore the role of occupational segregation in keeping women’s pay down: There are some jobs done mostly by women and others that are still largely the province of men. The latter are typically better paid. But if the coronavirus has taught us anything, it is that what has traditionally been women’s work — caring, cleaning, the provision of food — can no longer be taken for granted. “It’s not the bankers and the hedge fund managers and the highest paid people” upon whose services we’ve come to rely, said Amy Ross, former national organizer for New Zealand’s Public Service Association union. “It’s our supermarket workers, it’s our cleaners, it’s our nurses — and they’re all women!”

Opinion | How to End ‘Women’s Work’ and its Pay Gap - The New York Times

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In reality, the police patrol and harass. They reluctantly answer questions better suited for town visitor centers. They enforce traffic laws at their discretion, or to shore up municipal budgets through the imposition of exorbitant fines. They arrest people who have disobeyed them and then make up the charges later. They dismiss the stories of rape victims; they side with domestic abusers. They break into homes via no-knock warrants. They introduce the potential for violence by responding to calls about loud music—or counterfeit $20 bills. They shoot and kill with impunity. Regardless of the other responsibilities police have assumed, they have consistently inflicted violence on the most marginalized people in society.

Police Reform Is Not Enough - The Atlantic

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Unfortunately, people who have been out of work for a long while are experiencing a hard time getting back to work. The number of long-term unemployed—officially designated as 27 weeks or more—increased to 3.6 million, accounting for about 32.5% of the total unemployed.

Millions Of Americans Face Discrimination For Being Long-Term Unemployed: Here’s How To Fight Back

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Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

Arundhati Roy: ‘The pandemic is a portal’ | Free to read  | Financial Times

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I constantly asked for work to do but it was always withheld from me, and I became increasingly paranoid trying to work out why. Any work that I did get was either menial or it had already been done, by my boss. I didn’t get clear answers to my questions about the role and I often had my weekly catch-ups – where I would voice these frustrations – pushed back for days. And yet I was always told that I was performing well, which left me even more confused.

Gaslighting At Work Boss Emotional Manipulation

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My recent review of 50 years of national crime data confirms that, as police report, they don’t solve most serious crimes in America. But the real statistics are worse than police data show. In the U.S. it’s rare that a crime report leads to police arresting a suspect who is then convicted of the crime. The data show that consistently over the decades, fewer than half of serious crimes are reported to police. Few, if any arrests are made in those cases. In reality, about 11% of all serious crimes result in an arrest, and about 2% end in a conviction. Therefore, the number of people police hold accountable for crimes – what I call the “criminal accountability” rate – is very low.

Police solve just 2% of all major crimes

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As prison industrial complex (PIC) abolitionists, we want far more than what the system that killed Breonna Taylor can offer – because the system that killed her is not set up to provide justice for her family and loved ones.

The System That Killed Breonna Taylor Cannot Deliver Justice For Her

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Anti-blackness covers the fact that society’s hatred of blackness, and also its gratuitous violence against black people, is complicated by its need for our existence. For example, for white people — again, better described as those who have been racialized white — the abject inhumanity of the black reinforces their whiteness, their humanness, their power, and their privilege, whether they’re aware of it or not.

Opinion | Racism Didn’t Kill George Floyd. Anti-Blackness Did. - The New York Times

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Despite much reporting of a spike in murder this year, the long-term trend still shows the murder rate hovering roughly in the same place it was in the 1960s, half of what it was in 1980. And while procedurals may paint a picture of cops chasing serial killers weekly, the actual face of police is more mundane. In June, the New York Times culled available data and estimated that police spend roughly 4 percent of their time addressing “violent crime.” Most of their time is spent dealing with noncriminal matters. And yet no matter the call—the loud party next door, the permit for a parade, the expired car tags, the escort for a funeral procession, the elderly welfare check, the frolickers barbecuing in the park, the schoolyard fight, the opioid overdose, the homeless person outside in the cold, the stray dog—the state’s answer is to respond with armed agents blessed with the near unimpeachable right to kill. The impact is not theoretical.

How to Abolish the Police, According to Josie Duffy Rice | Vanity Fair

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Conventional approaches to capacity building, however, have been largely inaccessible to nonprofits of color. They also often rely on tools, workshops, and resources designed by white consultants for white-led, mainstream nonprofits. Unfortunately, these conventional approaches have had limited success when applied to nonprofits of color, and have even been harmful and disempowering to communities of color. However, a number of organizations and individuals across the country have been developing new methods for capacity building that better serve nonprofits of color. While these methods are diverse, they have some core approaches in common. In this article, we will be exploring seven approaches that work to address the pitfalls of conventional capacity building and collectively support the potential of nonprofits of color to transform all our communities.

Addressing Racial Inequities through Transformational Capacity Building